This week, I hope you’re not expecting anything opinionated. My New Year’s resolution, kicking in only slightly late, is to remain utterly impartial on everything. This follows the great Jenni Murray neutrality debate. Murray, the redoubtable host of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, wrote an article last Sunday which waded unwisely into the waters of transgenderism.

Thank God it was for a rival paper! Julie Burchill once wrote unkindly about transgender women in this very space, when I was on holiday, and the reaction from readers was such that the entire editorial staff is still quaking to this day.

My fault for going away, I suppose. If I’d been here, I’d have written something jolly about pelicans or the Queen’s shoes.

As it was, the Observer top brass encountered furious protesters and the poor boys have never recovered. Only the other day, I tried to tell my commissioning editor that I was considering a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway, but he ran screaming from the room before I got to the end of the sentence.

I’ve always been turned on by that moment, in real life or drama, when people have had enough of being pushed around

I can’t deny, as much as I love my Observer colleagues (who are among the kindest and best; they are not the problem and never have been), I found something thrilling about the noise – and all the subsequent noise, whenever a non-transgender person tries to say anything at all about the experience of feeling or being transgender. The roar that comes back, the tidal wave of fury … it’s a real adrenaline rush.

I’ve always been a bit turned on by that moment, in real life or drama, when people have just had enough of being pushed around. You know: that glint in the eye when someone has suddenly decided not to be bullied any more. That change to the set of the jaw, the glance over the shoulder, the narrowed stare, the getting up from the floor with a new determination. Coward Of The County has long been one of my favourite songs.

When things kick off, after those moments, it can be a bit messy. The wrong person can get a bloody nose; the right person can be hit too hard; the fight can go on too long; the bar can be destroyed to the detriment of the guiltless barman. But a point is being made, a world re-fashioned, and that’s what makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

The “transgender community” is brimming with joy and adrenaline at finally having power and a voice (and, indeed, a “community”) after aeons of suffering perhaps the loneliest condition there was. That power and normalisation are so new; the loneliness and bullying so fresh in the memory. Christ, can you imagine wanting to “change sex” in 1978?

Okay, maybe the joy is a bit dizzying; maybe the power is a bit over-expressed; maybe a few well-meaning observers are being trampled unduly underfoot. But it’s the transgender lobby’s moment. The future is now! The smashed spectacles have become a clenched fist, the stammering croak is a battle cry! They are Tommy from the county, taking on the Gatlin boys at last! (“He wasn’t holdin’ nothin’ back, he let ’em have it all … dum dum dum dum…”). Stand back, I say, and be exhilarated.

I do understand why debaters worry about an encroachment on freedom of expression – especially traditional feminists, with all of history telling them to beware anyone’s attempt to silence them. But I can’t see the benefit in trying to close down transgender exuberance either, any more than you’d tell your friend who came out of prison a week ago that he’s having too much sex. These are the antithesis years, and debate can wait until synthesis.

I do understand why debaters worry about an encroachment on freedom of expression – especially traditional feminists

So, if I were Jenni Murray, I would have left this subject well alone. But I certainly don’t think that pragmatic approach should be enshrined in any kind of rule. Rules are dangerous creatures, when it comes to what people can and can’t say.

Thus, I was sorry to read that a “BBC spokesman” had told the newspapers: “Jenni Murray is a freelance journalist and these were her own views, however we have reminded her that presenters should remain impartial on controversial topics covered by their BBC programmes.”

Hmmm. The comments weren’t made in Murray’s BBC programme, but in a newspaper. The rules must have changed since Gary Lineker tweeted about migrants and the BBC said “Gary is a freelance broadcaster and this is his personal Twitter account”.

It certainly can’t be that freelance BBC presenters are allowed to say whatever they like, as long as they say the right thing. That surely wouldn’t be a workable system. So it must be that the rules have changed. And I had better make a note of them: after all, I’m a freelance presenter on the BBC, too! Writing in a Sunday newspaper, just like Jenni Murray!

I don’t want to lose my job; the current series of Only Connect is only a few weeks away from the final, how unfair on viewers if we were wrenched off screen now! (If you think we have been wrenched off screen, by the way, we haven’t. We just moved to Fridays),

Therefore, from now on, I am going to be fully impartial in everything I write. I’m sorry it took me so long to explain the new policy. Everything that precedes this paragraph was merely by way of introduction. I shall now get on with the column.

How ghastly that poachers killed that rhino in a French zoo. A beautiful creature was shot dead by people to whom it had never done any harm. Absolutely barbaric. Then again, rhino horn is so hard to find these days and I have a great deal of respect for traditional Chinese medicine. And we all know that rhinos are grumpy. Brought it on itself, I reckon.